Strides for Success

Tag: Driving

  • Learning to Stop Blocking with Your Seat While Riding – Part 2

    Learning to Stop Blocking with Your Seat While Riding – Part 2

    Are you guilty of saying one thing to your horse, when you actually mean another?  You’re not alone!  This is the second part of a 2 part series all about blocking with your seat, and how to stop doing it! Part 1 is HERE

    [fusebox_track_player url=”https://op3.dev/e/traffic.libsyn.com/dailystridespodcast/1167-Learning-to-Stop-Blocking-with-Your-Seat-Part-2.mp3″ title=”Learning to Stop Blocking with Your Seat – Part 2″ social_linkedin=”true” social_pinterest=”true” social_email=”true” tweet_text=”3 exercises to help you stop blocking your horse with your seat when you ride…” hashtag=”equestrianpodcast” twitter_username=”strides_success” ]

    Before we dive into the actual riding exercises you can do to discover if you have been blocking.  And then, using those same exercises to actually begin allowing.  Let’s get clear on what we mean when we say ‘blocking’.

    Blocking is when you mean to say ‘carry on’, but instead you say ‘whoa’. It is applying the resisting force of your seat when you actually want to simply allow your horse to really move your seat.

    Are You Blocking with Your Seat While Riding? Part 2

    Exercise 1:- Allowing in the Walk

    A lot can be learned about your influence on your horse in the walk. Slight changes and tweaks to what you are doing can have a big and, very important, noticeable impact on your horse’s way of going. Use this to your advantage and test yourself…

    In halt, take both feet out of your stirrups. From here, ask your horse to walk forward. Your goal is to simply follow your horse with your seat. Like dancing. Your horse is the lead partner. You are literally a split second ‘behind’ your horse’s movement and yet moving with him – not being dragged!

    As your horse walks, pay close attention to the rhythm of the walk and how much ground he is covering with each stride.

    From here, notice which leg is moving when underneath you. Your left seat bone will dip down (lower) and move forwards when your horses left hind leg is in the air and moving forwards. When this is happening, your right seat bone will rise up and move backward. This corresponds with your horse’s right hind foot being on the ground and his body moving over it.

    Get To Know Your ‘Gears’

    As mentioned in the previous episode and blog post HERE, you have 3 basic ways you can use your seat when riding. Go, whoa, and neutral. You can ask for ‘more’, you can steady or slow things down, or you can affirm what your horse is doing and tell him to ‘carry on’.

    Begin playing with the ‘three gears’ of your seat. Go, whoa, and neutral. Driving, resisting, and allowing.

    Go versus Neutral

    Start with ‘go’ first. Again, notice the movement of your seat and how this corresponds with your horse’s hind legs. Remember that when asking for more, there can be a temptation to ‘drive’. As in, dig a hole! Resist this temptation! Simply think about ‘encouraging’ your horse forward a little more through the energy of your seat.

    Go will not be used all the time. Riders begin ‘driving’ when they confuse ‘go’ and ’neutral’. They confuse driving and allowing.

    You will only say ‘go’ when you either need to add more energy or you are changing what you are doing. Riding in ‘go’ or driving for the entire ride will result in your horse ignoring your aids. This then results in the rider doubling down on their efforts. Go is not allow!

    Whoa versus Neutral

    From here, play with resisting. Again, it is often easiest to begin this by thinking of a swing and how you would ‘stop’ the swing with your body. Like go, whoa is only used when you are either balancing or changing what you are doing. Otherwise, you should, again, ride in neutral.

    Blocking occurs when riders are riding the whole ride, or a vast proportion of it, in whoa.

    Playing with Your Gears in Walk

    Once you can feel how each ‘gear’ feels in the walk, begin playing with them. Be intentional about when and how you use them. Notice what influence each ‘gear’ has over your horse’s way of going.

    As with all aids, your seat aid will not just ‘stand-alone’ when you use it.

    Notice the balance of your seat aid with your other aids and how you can begin tweaking the pressure, the sequence, and the timing of each aid. Also, play with which aid has a ‘lead role’ and which has a supporting role in each question you ask of your horse. All horses are different. Therefore each horse will respond to your aids in a slightly different way.

    Dedicate time to discovering which aids your horse prefers when communicating, and then begin refining those aids.

    Exercise 2:- The Sitting Trot

    Oh, this one is a biggie when it comes to riders. In my experience, the more movement in a rider’s upper body when riding the sitting trot, the more likely they are blocking with their seat. This is usually the case for canter as well.

    Many riders learn early on that the easiest way to avoid being bounced around in sitting trot is to ‘hunker down’.

    They collapse their upper body completely. So much that it literally squashes their seat area (belly button to upper thighs), in an attempt to stop bouncing around in the saddle as the horse moves. When the horse is moving slowly or with no energy or forwardness, you will get away with this. It is probably the ‘easiest way’ to ride the sitting trot.

    However, the issues begin to appear when more energy is put into the container that makes up horse and rider. When more ‘swing’ is required. More suppleness.

    The literal ‘heaviness’ of the collapsed upper body will block the lower torso from moving, and in doing so, block the horse.

    Start with Carrying Yourself

    I mentioned in the previous episode and blog post that the term ‘sitting’ in the saddle is a confusing one. Yes, you are technically sitting. However, your core should feel more like you’re standing. It should be engaged and carrying you.

    Begin in a slow sitting trot that is perhaps lacking the forwardness it should have. Work on carrying your upper body. Simply put, create space between your lower ribcage and your pelvis or hips. Elongate your body.

    As your horse moves, notice that your seat (belly button to upper thighs) moves like a hinge, rather than simply up and down.

    We often think of up and down in trot because most riders are introduced to trot and trotting with the words up and down being used a lot to encourage posting or rising. However, as we begin to create a more independent seat, we notice that it is less upend down and rather forward and back. Like a hinge.

    What is important to notice is that your lower torso, your seat, is doing the moving. Not your upper body, your shoulders, and chest.

    Play with Your Gears

    From here, begin experimenting with the same 3 basic gears. Go, whoa, and neutral. Work on go first. It is often the one most riders are familiar with. Remember not to drive, but to simply ask a question. Driving is, again, when you are saying go all the time. It is when you get stuck in the ‘go’ gear!

    Then play with whoa. Resisting. Notice how you will only resist for a split second and then allow again. To continually resist will cause the tension level, or relaxation, to change to where it is no longer useful for you and your horse. For some horses, they become frustrated, excessive tension. For others, they simply do what you ask and slow down or stop, inadequate tension.

    The goal is to simply ‘allow’ your horse to work forward while you remain in the sitting trot. To move with your horse, rather than pushing or pulling with your seat.

    Exercise 3:- The Canter

    I know, I said two exercises, but this one is also a great one for really showing you if you’re guilty of blocking with your seat while cantering. Take a video of yourself. Focus on the canter itself. I would suggest cantering a 20m circle or similar for two or three circuits. This is long enough to really see what happens when you ‘get going’ in the canter.

    When you watch it, notice if you’re guilty of some questionable 1980s style shoulder movements while riding the canter.

    For many riders, the first few strides are good. They allow through the transition into a canter and move with the horse. However, then they feel that they have to ‘do something’. And this is where all that upper body movement begins. Lots of ducking and, often, swinging with one shoulder ahead of the other. Like the ‘Dem Bones’ song goes “Hip bone connected to the backbone, Backbone connected to the shoulder bone”.

    The shoulder movement is happening because the hips are blocking the energy. And the energy has to go somewhere!

    As soon as you begin noticing your shoulders ‘swinging’, think about firstly carrying your upper body. Engage your core just like you would while standing. From there, focus on allowing your seat to move and your shoulders remaining ‘still’. Obviously, you are on a horse and moving. They are not going to be completely stationary. However, they won’t be ‘swinging’.

    Finally, work on then allowing your hands to literally follow your seat. So that your seat and hands are following your horse…

    Allowing With Your Seat

    Allowing or neutral is so important to understand in your riding. It is also a place where bad habits can creep in and then negatively influence all areas of your riding. Learn to pay attention to your horse’s rhythm and the amount of ground he is covering with each stride.  They will show you the influence you are having over him using your seat.

    By clearly identifying the driving and resisting (go and whoa), you will begin to more clearly identify neutral. 

    And remember, you will spend the most time in neutral… The others are simply to ask questions or to correct.

    Happy Riding
    Lorna

    Additional Resources on This Topic

  • Learning to Stop Driving with Your Seat

    Learning to Stop Driving with Your Seat

    Do you often hear the term ‘electric backside’ being used to describe you when you ride?  Perhaps you have found that usually docile and ‘laid back’ horses become a little more, well, lively when you are in their saddle?  Have you ever considered that perhaps you don’t realise just how much you are communicating to your horse through your seat…

    When I first heard the term electric backside I had visions of lightning bolts shooting out of a riders backside, through the saddle and straight into the horse!  Now as strange as this sounds, the reality of having an ‘overactive seat’ has a very similar effect on how your horse behaves while being ridden.

    [smart_track_player url=”https://op3.dev/e/traffic.libsyn.com/dailystridespodcast/686-Learning-to-Stop-Driving-with-Your-Seat.mp3″ title=”Learning to Stop Driving with Your Seat in the Saddle” social_linkedin=”true” social_pinterest=”true” social_email=”true” tweet_text=”Struggling to ‘quiet’ your seat in the saddle? This will help…” hashtag=”equestrian #horseriding” twitter_username=”strides_success” ]

    When we learn to ride, we very quickly begin to notice that how we sit and move influences the horse and how he goes. This awareness is one of the most important parts of developing ‘feel’ and becoming a good rider. however merely knowing this is not enough. Controlling this important aid in the saddle is, for most riders, a little more difficult to master.

    Being able to influence your horse using your seat is one thing, but knowing how to shift between ‘stop, go and neutral’ and all the important subtleties in between, is quite another.

    For many riders this is where the problems begin to arise.  Riders discover that they are ‘over sharing’ when it comes to communicating with their seat aids.  The result is often that the rider is driving with their seat all the time.

    Before we go any further, it is important to recognise that there are certain situations and scenarios where, yes indeed, you will have to drive your horse forward with your seat.However we are speaking here about riders who have incorporated the habit of scrubbing with their seat, like they are trying to polish the saddle or rub a hole in their horses back with their backside, as the status quo.  It becomes their modus operandi or ‘go to’ method for riding their horse.

    This can result in a few things happening. Usually their horse becomes increasingly hot and lively, or their horse begins to ignore their aids completely.

    After all it’s not much fun being shouted at all the time, and constant driving with your seat is the equivalent of roaring at your horse – the whole ride!

    Think of your seat as being similar to the gears of a car.  You can transition up and down gears, however there is also the all important neutral. And to begin really seeing results in riding you need to be able to do all three of the above.

    Knowing how to disengage your seat or, in the case of the car gears, find neutral is vitally important to becoming more quiet and subtle in how you communicate with your horse.

    In my experience, the canter is very often the easiest place to being noticing if you are indeed being a little over enthusiastic with your seat when in the saddle. When you are really driving your horse with your seat in the canter, the horse may begin to hollow his back out from underneath you. This can often be felt rather than seen when in the saddle. However, unfortunately the tendency is there to only focus on what you see in front of you –  your horse bracing against your hand.  But if this is looked at from the ground, it quickly becomes very obvious that the horse is bracing his whole body away from the rider.

    Constant driving with the seat leads to an often epic battle between horse and rider.  Your horse does not have to be galloping or even cantering for this to happen.  It occurs in all gaits, however (as mentioned above) it is usually easiest to spot in the canter.  The overuse of the seat, hips and pelvis in the canter often causes the riders shoulders to begin to ‘swing’ in the canter as well.

    Another way this can show up is when the horse begins to hollow out from underneath the rider through the actual trot to canter transition itself.  We often hear about ‘scooping’ the horse into canter using the inside seat bone.  If you are prone to being a little heavy-handed with your seat to begin with, that same ‘scooping’ can quickly become uncomfortable for you horse.  The result is often that the horse will strike on the incorrect lead.

    However, perhaps the most obvious, is the horse who starts out quite relaxed in the canter, however due to the riders continuous driving, soon becomes tense and rushed.  What began as a good quality canter rather quickly turns into something resembling the final furlong at Aintree!

    Learning to Stop Driving with Your Seat

    Now, we know that we cannot effectively communicate and ride our horses if we just sit in the saddle completely stationary.  We realise that we have to move with our horse when in the saddle.

    But moving with the energy and driving the energy are two very different things.

    When we learn to canter, we are often told that we must ‘roll’ our hips with the motion of the horse. When I am explaining this in the arena I will often use my wrist and hand to demonstrate the movement.  The normal canter will be, from the elbow, my lower arm horizontal to the ground moving up and back, followed by forward and down in an almost circular rotation.  As my arm completes the ‘down and forward’ part of the circle, my wrist will flex slightly down, causing the back of my hand to become a little more upright. Then as my arm begins to lift up, in order to come back closer to my body, my wrist will flex up, allowing my hand to become more horizontal again.

    When a person drives with their seat, the circuit is the same, however as my arm is moving forward and down, the heel of my hand is pushing forward as well.  This causes the back of my hand to strain at an almost 90 angle to my wrist. Then as my arm raises up to come back, the action is no longer fluid as my wrist relaxes again.

    I mentioned earlier how an overactive seat is a little like shouting at your horse all the time.  Good riding is an holistic practice; all aids are involved when communicating with your horse.  In order for your horse to hear and understand all the different aids, they must be subtle.

    So what can you do if you in fact have lightning bolts shooting from your backside when you are in the saddle. Well the first thing is you need to start learning to follow.  Now you are probably saying, “Yes, I do follow – I just follow awfully well!”

    If this is the case I would hazard a guess that you are doing less following and more leading.  I suggest going back a few steps initially with your riding and focus on allowing your horse to move.  Let any movement happening in your seat to be guided by your horse.

    Start with walk initially and think about doing as little as possible, while still allowing everything to happen underneath you.  This is neutral.  When you can find neutral and begin getting used to how this feels, you can then begin working on shifting to first gear and so on.

    It is important to keep in mind that neutral and ‘heavy’ are two very different things.  Heavy does not ‘allow’, it rather blocks the flow of energy underneath you.  Neutral is being carried along, understanding that you still have the responsibility of carrying your own body.

    Unfortunately a lot of riders, once they commit to becoming more ‘quiet’ with their seat, begin slouching through their upper body.  Doing this will definitely cause less movement with your seat, but it will also make things uncomfortable for your horse and cause you to become even less effective in the saddle!

    Rather think of elongating or lifting your upper body off of your hips.  This does not mean that you ride with your shoulders around your ears, but rather carrying your ribcage, so to lengthen the space between it and your pelvis.   Doing this will result in your hips and seat being able to move with your horse, in neutral.  From neutral, you can begin experimenting with how you can use your seat to encourage your horse to move forwards.

    From here, you can begin to work on this ‘allowing’ in both trot and canter. Keep in mind that doing nothing is one of the most difficult things to do on a horse, but in order to break that ‘driving’ habit, it is often the very thing you need to learn!

    Your seat is possibly the most important and effective tool you have when riding your horse, however cultivating that all important ‘feel‘ will take time.  Learning the difference between enough and too much is important – and very often you have to go right back to basics in order to do so.

    Happy Riding
    Lorna

    If you are interested in taming your seat in the saddle, there are a few resources I have that may help you.  Firstly, you can join the FREE 30 Day Rider Fitness Challenge.  Over the course of the 30 days, you will strengthen your core, which will allow you better control over your body in the saddle.

    You can also join Daily Strides Premium, where you will find a whole ‘collection’ of audio horse riding lessons on the seat aids, as well as lots of other collections to help you with your riding.  All the lessons are available for you immediately when you join, and it’s as simple as downloading them to your phone, popping your phone in your pocket and off you go!  A riding instructor with you in the arena.   You can find out more when you visit www.StridesforSuccess.com/join/

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